Emerging Syntheses in Science

Santa Fe, October 1984. Many of the most accomplished creative minds in science—including four Nobel laureates—gather to create an institution unlike any other: where unconventional thinking flourishes and disciplinary boundaries fall away.

From this meeting emerged some of the most generative research programs of the last three decades, including the physics of living systems, the mathematics of society, quantitative archaeology, the nature of mind, fundamentals of complex systems theory—and the implications of all of these on the future. The original vision of a boundary-spanning research center became what Nature has called “that mecca of multidisciplinary complexity studies,” the Santa Fe Institute.

With a new introduction by David Krakauer and Geoffrey West and an afterword by Stephen Wolfram, as well as never-before-published transcripts of the founding workshop discussions, this volume of seminal essays lays the foundation for thirty years of complexity science—and outlines challenges for thirty more.